We are still adjusting to life without an RV. Our motor trip for this year is to one of our favorite destinations, Ashland, OR and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Actually they now go way beyond the Bard and have added several entirely new productions.
Next we saw Indecent, a controversial play inspired by Shalom Ashe’s G-d of Vengeance. It tells about the twentieth century history of the Jewish people. We stayed for the theater discussion. One criticism was that OSF has done only two plays with Jewish content, the second one being Merchant of Venus. Several people in the discussion expressed displeasure that these plays present common stereotyping. We found the play powerful and also disturbing. (We discovered we had seen one of principal actors in Elephant and Piggy back in DC. What a change of roles.)
Because of the smoke in the area, the outdoor plays are being presented in the high school theater. This made Macbeth more intimate and disturbing. The actor who played Lady Macbeth was fantastic and we look forward to seeing her in another play next week. Some of the minor actors in this play were so weak we thought they were walk-ons.
Our last play of the week was Cambodian Rock Band, a story of the Khmer Rouge invasion of Cambodia. This play was so powerful, we were relieved not to have another play in the evening.
That evening we did enjoy the Ashland City Orchestra’s program of marches presented in Lithia Park.
No comments:
Post a Comment